


Flocked Wallpaper

by handschuhmaus



Series: Chemistry and Life/Химия и Жизнь [1]
Category: Goodbye Earl (Song), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder, Cosinga is surprisingly durable and/or Hutts are also lax about content labels, Dark Comedy, Dark Crack, Domestic Violence, Don't Try This At Home, Gen, Goodbye Earl...er Cosinga, Hutt Acme Chemical Laboratory Supply, Medical Inaccuracies, Murder, Poisoning, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Suicide Attempt, Why Did I Write This?, a more or less happy ending, also kinda like Matilda but a lot more deadly, and the wallpaper, gratuitous poisoning without much other plot, in the library with the lead pipe, in the man cave with the candlestick, in the wardrobe with the felt collar and some heavy metal compounds, misuse of chemistry, teeny Palpatine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-29 14:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Or, The Catalog of Poisons.Both Lord and Lady Palpatine have been deathly ill. The main difference in their condition is probably that the Lady tried to kill them both.





	Flocked Wallpaper

**Author's Note:**

> ~~I completely by accident figured out a slightly counterintuitive way I can input creative tags again!~~
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> Aside from possibly the thought of the song "Goodbye Earl" and some revenge on Cosinga urges prompted by fic, I'm not sure where this one came from. 
> 
> As far as warnings: There is a lot of poisoning here, some defensive violence, and domestic abuse, mostly psychological or neglect but with a dash of physical harm.  
> Seriously, _**DO NOT**_ imitate this story. It is an entertaining revenge fantasy only.  
>  Suicide also comes up. The non-con warning pertains to a non-graphic scene that is stopped by a third character and a reference to marital rape/denial of reproductive autonomy.

Amara Palpatine has two kids in rapid succession at the beginning of her marriage, with barely six months rest in between. Her husband hates their firstborn, and partially because he blames the babe in arms for wrecking his wife's attractiveness and availability for sex. (Also, to be fair, little Sheev Cosinga Palpatine has a little bit of an unnerving quality, but that is something parents ought to be able to get past). He doesn't really care about the fact that both of them sent her into crippling postpartum depression.

Cosinga, lord of his household and disciplinarian extraordinaire, locked up the medical supplies and the first-aid droid, so that nobody could secretly tend to any wounds he inflicted in discipline without his knowledge. He even instituted a policy forbidding flexible vessels for liquids and any ice that wasn't crushed in the kitchen, so no one could have a cold compress for a bruise.

That's why it's the cooking droid that activates a dire-emergency subroutine no one would expect it to be programmed with and dials the emergency medical hotline when Amara, attempting suicide for the third and most potentially effective time, hacks up her wrists with a steak knife.

* * *

The therapist, Dr. Bernard, isn't all that helpful, when she's committed to the hospital. He can't do anything about Cosinga and in fact he's being paid by the man, so he tries to gloss over the issue and not talk about her home life, or having little to no say in having her babies, or the lack of opportunity for fulfilling activities.

His sister-in-law comes to visit because his wife is sick, and Jennie Berrings is a far more interesting prospect. It could just be that she's the first person Amara has encountered to whom she would willingly listen about chemistry. But it probably isn't that. She also talks some about domestic abuse--just, she says wryly, so you know. And she's been through the suicide attempt thing as well. It's giving Amara an interesting fatalism, honestly.

She burns the "make a follow up appointment!" card from the therapist the hour she leaves the hospital, but she keeps Dr. Berrings's comm number...

* * *

It's a bit astonishing, perhaps, just how easy it is to put "1 billion copies sold" and fake endorsements on the cover of a preposterous tract advocating for the ingestion of poison as ...wait for it... a means to preventing being poisoned. 

And, well, if you want to make half the able-bodied womanizing politicians of Naboo ill for up to a week with food poisoning, that's surprisingly easy too, when you flirt a bit with the overworked cook and do a little creative plumbing right beside the salad greens going out at the major dinner of the season. 

(Jennie thought both would be, but emphasized that the idea was all speculation.)

Combined, Cosinga Palpatine is astonishingly taken with the plot. Of course, the book didn't come from his wife but from one of his equally gullible best political allies, who received a copy from the supposed author, an Iocaine Rosencrantz, with pleas to let Lord Palpatine, "a great champion of political causes", know about it as well. Edric Viirtio is not a reader.

Mind, Amara intervenes a little at dinner. Not to stop him procuring potassium chromate, his chosen poison of the week (supposedly popular in speeder race betting circles), or applying a copious portion to his stew but, mentally apologizing for the tirade sure to ensue over the boy's continued pickiness, withdrawing little Sheev's saucer, showered in the powder, with the excuse that he still isn't eating meat.

* * *

But she doesn't stop there. That would be...silly.

Hutt space is not inaccessible under the pretext of some frivolous shopping trip to look her best for him. She knows theatrical make-up (which Jennie buys her) from theater for a year in middle grades until her mother had consulted the fathers of Cosinga and several other potential matches and declared it unacceptable. A head scarf, a wig, clothes she bought at the charity shop with unmarked credits from an envelope of bribes paid to Cosinga and now funding his downfall (the clothes she'll donate again), delicate gloves that hide her fingerprints, mirrored lenses. She won't be recognized.

Hutts are extraordinarily lax about hazmat regulations. You can walk in and buy an assortment of exceedingly dangerous items, like an ampule of 98% halogenated and hazardous organic compounds, or a kilo of arsenic. And that's precisely what she does, with the knowledge Jennie gives her.

* * *

When she once told Cosinga he was being ridiculous about restricting her socializing, he went into lengthy elaboration on how she was imagining things. Amara pays him back for the--Jennie says it's gaslighting, by entirely denying that there is broken glass in his study. 

The first dose is the ampule with all those halogen-carbon dangerous names that get towns destroyed for their presence. She cracks it against the wall and then takes the babies to the zoo, picks the lock on the insect and bantha exhibits, and pulls a fire alarm. Time isn't going to help with the hazard, but Jennie did tell her how to find out how to clean it up.

The second glass incident is ingenious. Glassware isn't all that inherently hazardous, but you can get it at Hutt Acme Chemical Laboratory Supply too. Amara engineers a poison gas generator, built with flame and glass and acid and a stopper that slowly dissolves and releases the reactants. Builds it inside a wine bottle, fills the outside back up and puts it it in the wall compartment where he stashes pornographic materials. They're going to be ruined, but the house will air out.

Cosinga shows up to the governor's party late, with a nagging cough, and a sudden attack of horrible acne, but he doesn't reconsider his initial verdict when Dr. Bernard actually does recommend allowing his wife a little more social freedom.

* * *

And then there's the poetic ones. 

He keeps a few candles in his study, lights them occasionally to impress upon an important guest his respect for tradition. The day before he expects the patriarch of an old Naboo family, she replaces them with something a little less safe, cadmium distributed in the paraffin, and wicks she let wick up some arsenic solution.

Cosinga likes to trade favors. Some administrator's niece gets to decorate his office, he'll get to sleep with her, and her uncle gets, well, owed a political favor by a man who honestly has relatively limited influence. 

They call jealousy a green-eyed monster, well, she dons all the protective gear and sponges down the wallpaper in green, green copper arsenite, another thing the Hutts are happy to exchange clear credits for.

It must be some premonition that she dresses up like a wraith of hell, that place the Palpatines supposedly guard, and hides the next time the decorator has an appointment, because she doesn't let him get past a threat to take what he wants and one breast bared before she strikes his thick head hard with a candelabra. It's not as subtle as she likes, but it'll do. Cosinga didn't like his new green wallpaper, but why should he take that out on the decorator? ( _She_ flees, with a brief word of thank you.)

* * *

Whoever Iocaine Rosencrantz is or was, they are apparently very persuasive about the whole ingesting poison thing. (And Cosinga doesn't read closely either.)

In a fit of pique, Amara dismantles some of the pipes in his prized historic cottage and brings them home to put the lead in his wine--it will be a sort of poetically ironic and that sourcing will have unpleasant consequences on his lavatory as well. But she sees fit to repurpose them, and, truth be told, retaliate against her husband for the handful of times he decided her worthy only of bruises. Only because, again, willfully ignorant of the increased hazard to children, he tries to poison her son, taking him into the library to feed him blood thinning rat poison. 

Sheev mutely watches this revenge with wide, curious eyes.

* * *

Cosinga is occupied searching futily for ice packs he banned from the house. And if you want to be thorough, there's a felt collar-sort of thing on the bathrobe that he wears around the house. They used to treat felt with mercury salts and it drove the hatters mad. It's not so difficult to be a little more careful than the hatters were.

The only reason she didn't buy the pitchblende in its lead box is that she isn't sure that can be kept away from the children.

Nightshade grows freely if you know where to look. She'll taint his wine with it as well, and so his nightly routine. It's hardly that he's any more unacceptable when that drunk, but he prefers that moderate indulgence to ever listening to her, about any of her concerns, including his children. They make extracts or liqueurs, soaking fruit in alcohol, but if you were to extract poison berries in one with just one carbon too few, you'd surely end up with something noxious.

And even flowers can be hazardous. She puts foxgloves in the garden and in his spring peas, like an old-fashioned way with lettuce.

* * *

It's the dainty little flowers that cunning foxes could hide their pawprints with (supposedly) that precipitate the end, as he takes a shot of some antifreeze and a gulp of lead sweetened, belladonna doctored wine with his peas. 

She doesn't make him wait for the cooking droid to respond, but she does stand staring stonily at him for a minute, contemplating the competence of Naboo's foster care system and the potential fate of her children (when she goes to prison), before she comms emergency medical care. Waiting, it occurs to her to marvel that she hasn't tried to kill herself again, despite handling so many poisons.

* * *

Little Sheev and tinier Mina like the windy hilltop meadows on Jennie Berrings's home planet, and they finally get to be properly childish, even though they're a bit shy of it, running (or in Mina's case toddling) around and peering through the fence at the lambs. No more seen and not heard for them. Jennie's trying to replace it with "you can look but don't touch" regarding her collection of curiosities at home. But that's made miles better by the fact that, as Cosinga never did, she bought them stuffed animals (Mina lying on the giant plush tortoise and hugging the darling arm-sized stuffed "heffalump" while chewing on its trunk is a heartwarming childish sight, as is Sheev playing at the tuskcat mothering the mischievous squid.)

Their mother mentally thanks Iocaine Rosencrantz and rereads the message she got this morning. Considering that Viirtio himself was recovering in a care home from also (although slightly more temperatly) consuming poison, the Naboo authorities didn't charging anyone at all with the events that led to Cosinga's hospitalization. If you're fool enough to read and follow the advice of such a book it's really no mystery why you should present with a cocktail of poisons in your bloodwork on top of a flower induced heart attack.

That actually didn't kill him, the heart attack. Amara made her escape with the kids upon learning the supposedly heartbreaking news that the poisons had wrecked his liver and kidney function (and the methanol, unluckily, his eyes), and while they could and would keep him alive indefinitely, sedated with medical machines substituting for his organs, they really would have to wait on the slim chance that some healing might take place before they could possibly see to doing anything that might let him leave a medical facility. 

Jennie had welcomed them with open arms, kisses, and the aforementioned trip to the toy store, as she had told Amara she would.

His last words before they sedated him were "my wife--" and his wife hadn't seen fit to indicate that it was probably a curse and not a plea. But they'd proved to be his last words altogether anyway, because it turned out that the machines weren't good at removing every bit of every poison and couldn't be used with the normal chelation treatment. Cosinga had ultimately died (peacefully, they said), of the poison cocktail. 

She supposes today that the last blip in the road (which she'd had in fact expected to lead her to prison and despair) will be how she'll have to arrange his funeral, and show the kids how to feign sadness over him. She's pretty sure that even if she had told them about this message, they wouldn't really be sad. 

**Author's Note:**

> "Those black-eyed peas? They tasted alright to me, Earl"
> 
> I felt the urge to recommend she (or you) watch Professor Poliakoff (Periodic Videos on YouTube) for someone to listen to about chemistry, but I can't imagine that he would serve as an impetus for violently ridding yourself of an abusive husband.


End file.
